The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1887-07-20
An Army OF GrasshOppers.

One of the most remarkable wars
that ever occurred-a war in which
thirty thousand soldiers met an oppos-
ing force numbering tens of millions
is not recorded in the military histories
of the country in which it took place.
The country was Russia, and in the
year 1925 came the first call for troops.
The provinces lying between Odessa
and Kiev sent forth the first alarm.
Clouds, like gigantic whirlwinds, had
appeared in the air, rising in vast col
umns and spreading out in strange
forms above the earth. Nearer they
came, and finally the terrified peasants
found that the clouds were alive-in
fact were vast army of grasshoppers!
The face of the earth was soon covered
with them, and at midday the sun was
darkened, the insects lowering over the
earth like pail. They covered the
houses, crawled under doors and into
cracks, piled themselves up in heaps,
and spread devastation wherever they
appeared. The poor farmers vainly
fought them with fire, standing by their
gardens to the last The vast hordes
settled upon the green crops, in some
places to the depth of four or five feet,
and when they rose the barren ground
alone was left to tell the tale. Borne
along by the wind in waves and sheets,
the noise of their wings sounded like
the rushing of gale through the rig
ging of a vessel. So great were their
numbers that the peasants were crazed
with fear. Some believed that the end
of the world had come, while all saw
starvation staring them in the face, for
not only did the grasshoppers eat up
every blade of green, but they de-
voured the stores of hay and every edi-
BILE thing. The news of the resstless
advance of this vast invading army,
bringing famine with its onward march,
soon reached the government at Mos
cow, and in response to an appeal from
the people the Emperor Alexander or
dered out an army of thirty thousand
soldiers to fight them. Instead of guns
and cannon the men were armed with
spades, shovels, bags and implements
for making fires; and they advanced
upon the enemy, stretching out in a
line over two hundred miles long. The
horses could hardly drag the wagons
through the living mass, often two or
three feet deep. The grasshoppers
chung to the horses and men and
leaped about their heads, adding to the
confusion. They were shoveled up in
mounds, collected in bags, raked to-
gether and burned, yet there was no
perceptible effect upon their numbers
and through the governments of Ekater-
inburg and Kherson, for hundreds of
miles, to the Black Sea, they lay in a
solid mass two feet deep. Through
May and June they rose in continuous
clouds, carrying destruction every
where. A distinguished naturalist, on
his way to the Crimea, met the insects
fifty miles from Kiev. They chung to
the wagon-wheels like thick mud, and
the speed of his horses was reduced
from eight miles an hour to one. For
a long distance he passed thus through
these invaders. Crossing the Black
Sea, he found that on the island of
Phanagoria the insects had left the
ground. At distance of five miles
they resembled columns of black vol
canic smoke hanging in the air at a
height of six hundred feet, the upper
portion assuming the appearance of
dark clouds that cast weird shadows
upon the earth and darkened the SUMS
rays.-June 81. Nicholas.